A fruit and vegetable delivery man has been cleared of defrauding a catering firm of some €115,000, after a court ruled that prosecutors had failed to prove their case.

Antonio Briffa, 41, faced accusations that he had meddled with invoices to add products which were never delivered to clients.

Police had started investigating Briffa in 2009 after a local caterer filed a report about certain suspicious invoices in the company’s records.

Food costs appeared to exceed the allotted budget, the caterer had noted. Two particular invoices had been signed even before the order had been delivered. Moreover, suspicion arose about certain signatures on the invoices.

A €20 invoice for a box of bananas was upped to €1092, covering the cost of an additional 38 crates of apples, 21 crates of oranges, two boxes of kiwi and two boxes of grapes.

Briffa worked for a fruit and vegetable wholesaler and regularly delivered produce from the local importer’s stores. He targeted as the suspect and charged with defrauding the caterer and his own employer of some €114,987.

He was also charged with falsifying invoices, making use thereof, forgery of a private writing and misusing a blank document.

A family member working at the loading area of the catering company, where some of the orders were dropped off, had testified that her job was to check that the deliveries matched the invoices before signing receipt of the goods.

Asked about the suspect invoices, the witness had denied that the signatures on them were hers, saying that she had only signed for a box of bananas, not for the additional fruits.

A high-ranking company official also testified about security footage which had allegedly shown Briffa step behind the cash desk, open a box and slip something inside.

When watching that footage, the witness had not immediately realised that the delivery man had allegedly been slipping invoices into the box, he later explained in court.

The court also heard how added items on the invoice had never been delivered.

However, statements released by the accused under interrogation were inadmissible, as they had been obtained without Briffa having a lawyer present. This applied even though the right to a lawyer during interrogations was not enshrined in law at the time. 

On the basis of all other evidence, the court, presided over by magistrate Neville Camilleri, observed that the prosecution had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused was actually the person who had tampered with the invoices.

Nor had it been proved that Briffa had derived some kind of profit, said the court, observing that this was an essential requisite when proving fraud.

As for the other charges, the prosecution had failed to prove that the accused had actually made use of the allegedly forged documents.

The defence lawyers had rightfully pointed out that no handwriting sample had been requested or analysed by a calligraphy expert, so as to confirm that it was the accused who had altered the invoices.

There had been some 94 signatures on the invoices, but not one sample to match.

In the light of all this, the Court concluded that the prosecution had not sufficiently proved its case, thus clearing the accused of all criminal liability, pointing out that speculating on the alleged wrongdoing would be mere conjecture, lacking concrete proof.

Lawyers Alfred Abela and Rene Darmanin were defence counsel.